Death or not
by VioletWindStorm
Summary: Even the Spiritworld itself could not see Kagura risking her life to save a young boy, so when she dies, who else would be there to greet her but Botan herself?  KaguraSesshoumaru InuyashaYuYuHakusho
1. Not Overly Surprised to be Dead

_Inuyasha characters belong to Takahashi while the Yu Yu Hakusho ones belong to Togashi. _

_This story was an odd little idea that popped into my mind a while back. It contains spoilers for chapter 374 of "Inuyasha" and is based loosely on the plot of the first volumes of yyh. Enjoy:)_

_Rated for Kagura's language mostly... damn that woman curses a lot..._

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_I am the wind, she whispered as her soul finally returned to her element, as free as the wind…_

She could feel herself being lifted up, higher and higher above the ground where her body had laid, caught in a gentle breeze which she slowly became a part of. Below her, she could see him and the others, her former "enemies," her former ally and the one demon who had been the very embodiment of her hope since the first time her eyes had rested upon his form.

She sighed as she sat back in the air and watched the scene below her unfold with Sesshoumaru walking off in that way he always did and the little taijiya boy looking distressed before leaving with that sister of his. "Guess that bastard Naraku finally killed me."

"Bingo! Ding Ding! You've guessed correctly!"

Kagura, or what was left of her anyway, "jumped" about three feet higher into the air before whipping around to face what appeared to be some type of strange blue-haired youkai woman or else some overly-cheerful bipolar, teen fangirl. If ghosts or souls that had fused with pleasant breezes had hearts, Kagura's would have been racing right then.

"Who the HELL are you? And why are you coming up behind me like that you crazy bitch?"

The freakish woman in the pink kimono smiled cheerfully as she pointed to herself, suddenly taking on a British accent. "Hello there, I'm Death, the Grim Reaper, but you may call me Botan."

"…You're death?" Kagura's face in her suddenly appearing ghost-body was blank with a dash of sardonic annoyance.

"Yep," she said with a huge grin. Death was in a hot pink kimono and sitting upon what appeared to be a giant oar.

"You're what Naraku's been threatening me with for the past few months?"

"Yep." If possible, her grin seemed to grow larger.

Silence for a moment. "Heh… makes about as much sense as anything else here. I probably shouldn't even be this surprised considering my mother and father were the same man and cats can randomly ignore the law of conservation of mass and drastically increase in size."

"Well, well," continued the chipper, British voice, "someone seems a lot more laid back than they ever were in life!"

Kagura smiled. "I'm free now, no more reasons to be so uptight I guess. You gonna cart me off to hell now or just sit there?"

"Hehe, well now, this fan fic wouldn't have much of a plot if you just sat around in hell, now would it?" For some reason, the last half of her sentence lacked an accent.

"Fan fic…?"

"Oh… never mind that right now…" She actually seemed pretty annoyed; whatever stuff she had taken to get high in the first place was probably wearing off. "I haven't come here to take you to hell."

"Oh?" The wind spirit made her usual sarcastic face that she used when mocking Kagome or one of the other main characters.

"Actually, I'm here to offer you a chance to come back to life!"

"Really?" Her mocking façade dropped quickly in surprise. "You can do that?"

"Not me personally…" The chipperness and accent had come back again… "But Lord Koenma could do it!"

"Koenma…? Like King Enma's mini-me or something?"

"Bingo!"

"Stop saying that." Kagura sat for a moment, resting against the breeze. She had been in so much pain only moments before and now this idiot had come along… Death was a frigin exhausting experience. "So why am I being given his honor of being able to return to life? No one can stick a shikon shard in me. I don't have a body anymore."

"Well, you see Kagura, back in Spiritworld, everyone knew you'd be kicking the bucket any day now. We were ready to drag you down to the 8th or 9th circle of hell along with Naraku's other spawns, but then we saw the way you risked your life to save that little boy, Kohaku. Quite frankly, we weren't sure what to do with you after that. After all, it seems you never really wanted to serve Naraku. So what do you say? Care to try the ordeal so you can return to your body?"

"I already told you, my body was destroyed by that bastard Naraku."

"Shut up, this is a fan fic! If they can pair Naraku with Kagome or Voldemort with Draco we can certainly bring you back to life!"

"…Voldemort?"

"Forget him! Do you want to take the test or not?" Her little blue eyebrows furrowed in annoyance as she placed her hands on her hips.

"Sure," said Kagura, pulling a feather from her hair and sitting on it. "What the hell? Anything to see the look on that bastard Naraku's face when I show up alive."

Botan smiled cheerfully once more as she prepared to explain the test to Kagura secretly prayed that this would not turn into a yuri fic.


	2. Another Creepy Infant

Well... seems I'm actually continuing this... huh, who knew? Funny how I came here with the intention to write serious stories... oh well, this works too. Hopefully I can get up another plushie story soon and another chapter of "Foolish Thoughts and Complications." I've decided that the title of his story shall be read "Death! (or Not...)" I don't know why but writing it like that makes me feel special. ;

Disclaimer: Takahashi owns Inuyasha and Togashi own Yu Yu Hakusho.

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Ch2

Kagura's feather whooshed through the air as quickly as it could after Botan's oar, the wind streaming along quickly beside her. She was probably taking limbs of of trees and thing like that, but frankly she did not give a damn. She was free. Period. And if this psycho-bitch was telling the truth, then she would have the chance to come back to life and finally have a real chance to live. There were still so many things she wanted to say… things she wanted to do. Birds seemed to be fluttering around in her non-existent stomach as she remembered how _he _had been there with her, how he had come knowingly to her side.

Botan did a little loop-de-loop in the air, and, feeling so light-hearted at the moment, Kagura was very strongly tempted to do the same.

_Great,_ she thought to herself, a sardonic half-smile fleeting across her face, _her happy-disease is contagious. Hope the accent isn't…_

"This," sang the overly-joyous, falsely British voice "is the River Styx!"

The wind spirit glanced down from her feather at what looked to be a river of souls traveling across a barren plain. It was a stark, sickly landscape that would have churned her stomach had she had one. It vaguely reminded her of the river of Tekkei's blood Naraku and friends had traversed to reach the border between the worlds of the living and the dead.

_Of course it reminds me of that… I'm at the border of the living and the dead._

"If you look, Kagura-chan, you'll see Lord Koenma's castle straight ahead! Isn't this exciting?!"

Kagura raised an eyebrow. "You don't get out much, do you?"

"Now, now, no need to be rude! You'll want to suppress that type of attitude around Lord Koenma. He holds your life in his hands now, you know."

Kagura flinched at her last comment. "Screw him," she spat, an image of a mini Nara… well, basically a Hakudoshi popping up in her mind. "My life is mine."

Botan's sun-shiney aura faltered for a moment. "Sorry about that… I tend not to think before I speak sometimes…"

_No shit…_

"Whatever." The ghost turned her attention over to the monstrous castle looming before her. If this Koenma was another Naraku then there truly was no freedom for her, but perhaps he wasn't. After all, Botan worked for him and she seemed happy enough (although Kagura was still certain there were some illegal substances involved in that…)

"We're here!"

The girls jumped off of their rides as the feather simply disappeared and Botan stashed hr oar over her shoulder. That's when she noticed something strange; Kagura could feel the air around her even better than she could in life, but she could not feel the ground under her feet. Walking over the colossal stone building, Kagura touched her hand to the wall, but this time she could feel it.

_How strange…_

"You're a ghost now," said Botan, practically reading her mind. "You can only feel the castle because it has a strong spiritual energy about it. You won't be able to feel the ground or anything up in the living world."

Kagura was thoughtful for a moment as she processed this information. "I can feel the wind."

The happy-hostess looked mildly surprised at her statement. "That's odd. I suppose it's because of who you are. First I've heard in all my years of doing this job."

Without another word, Kagura pushed open the ancient wooden doors and stepped inside. Now, if the outside of the place had seemed like some ominous medieval castle, the inside was the total opposite. Stupid-looking blue ogre-demons in business suits scuttled this way and that. Carrying huge stacks of papers and yelling to one another about random people who were waiting to croak or whoever else had just kicked the bucket. The busy atmosphere was almost overwhelming to the wind ghost as she walking through it, the noise ringing in her ears so badly she almost wished she were still listening to Botan's drug-induced glee (almost.)

"What the hell is this?" She shouted over to Botan who seemed completely unaffected by everything.

"This is the main office of Death! This is where all the paperwork is processed and new souls are dealt with!"

_Please tell me this is someone's idea of a joke… _

At the end of the hallway was yet another large, medieval looking door with a crisp white nametag clearly showing the name "King Enma Jr." Botan approached it and rapped out a little tune with her knuckles.

_My gods… does this woman do _anything_ that isn't totally cutesy?_

"Come in Botan!" a small voice called from the inside as the heavy wooden door creaked over.

_Maybe if use my Dance of the Dead, I can control everyone in here… then I can pin down this Koenma kid and sever whatever hold he has on me… I wonder if my powers even work now…_

She sauntered casually into the room ahead of Botan only to find herself face to face with some little kid in a hat almost the size of his body.

"Good evening, Miss Kagura," he said, his lips invisible beneath the giant pacifier.

"Yo." Her voice was cold and flat.

"Well, well, someone seems exactly as we anticipated. Naraku's second detachment, are you not?"

"If you wanna call it that then yeah… sure."

"Very well then. I am Lord Enma Junoir, but most people just call me Koenma. I'm in charge of the afterlife while my father is away."

"I guess I should be used to answering to infants by now."

"I resent that."

Kagura shifted back and forth on her feet; she could actually feel the ground of the castle underneath her and decided it must have some sort of spiritual aura. "So… Koenma, what do I have to do to come back to life?"

"Not one to beat around the bushes, are you? Well, the task is this." The creepy toddler with the muffled voice reached inside of one of his desk drawers and pulled out a small, golden egg."

Cocking an eyebrow, the wind ghost asked, "Let me guess… you want me to scramble this and feed the hungry or some sort of other goody-goody B.S.?"

He gave a small chuckle in the back of his throat. "Oh no… I don't are what you do with it. However, if you can successfully hatch it, you will be permitted to return to life in a new body free of Naraku's influence."

"What's the catch?"

"No catch," he said, still not convincing Kagura entirely and for a good reason; both he and Botan knew that Kagura's fate rested on her own heart. If the egg absorbed her usual evil energy, it would hatch into a giant evil monster and swallow her whole. If she changed her ways, she would be able to hatch an anti-climatically cute fuzzball that had no plot significance whatsoever.


	3. Creepy, Undead, and Made of Clay

"Inuyasha" characters belong to Takahashi while "YYH" ones belong to Togashi.

Anyway, I decided Kagura gets to have some fun with Kikyo and friends this chapter. Enjoy!

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Ch. 3 Creepy, Undead and Made of Clay

Kagura stared down at the little golden egg in her hands. She still thought that there had to be some sort of catch and it would be better to scramble the damn thing and feed it to starving people, but that was an impulse she was too bored to act upon. It had been three days since her meeting with Koenma, and she had not done anything since then but sit around floating, listening to Botan and watching Inuyasha's team. It seemed Kohaku had run off from his sister again (woo, big surprise there) and was now traveling with that creepy dead bitch Inuyasha was always chasing around. Oh well, Kohaku was kind of a creepy dead kid; maybe they'd go well together.

She had not been to see Sesshoumaru yet and could not help but wonder why that was. Maybe the truth was that she really did not want to know how he was, did not want to see him. She knew that even if she went to him, he would not know she was there. Maybe she wanted to respect his privacy. Maybe that thought was just too painful. When and if she could be revived by the psycho-freaks she would go see him, and it would be awkward, and she would explain, and he'd raise and eyebrow, and maybe he would say it was none of his concern, or maybe he would let her go with him. Maybe they would be together for a while, and maybe death was permanent.

"You know," chipped a gay British sing-song voice, "I don't understand why you just sit there all day staring at those people instead of actually letting them know you're coming back."

"I have nothing to say to them," the wind ghost repeated for the millionth time that day. "They were my enemies in life." Upon returning from Spiritworld, Botan had explained to Kagura how she could communicate with people in the living world through possession or going into their dreams, but Kagura had refused to act on this. There was simply nothing she wished to say… not to anyone who would pay her message any attention anyway. The only thing she could really think of was to tell Kohaku she was okay so the boy would not feel as much grief over what had happened, but she had not yet gotten around to it. She really did not feel like letting Botan know she had any such feelings toward anything and had kept very hush-hush about everything except the usual sarcastic remarks which seemed to fly right over the ditz's head.

"Stop being so mopey! This fan fic needs a plot and you're not helping it at all!"

"There's that words again, 'fanfic.' What the hell does it mean?" Kagura was getting more than a little annoyed at Botan and had to wonder if her real test was actually putting up with her insane happiness for a given period of time. If so, she hoped that period would be short.

"Never mind that!" The oh-so-elusive accent had faded once again. "Look," she said pointing down to some figure walking below. Kagura immediately recognized the woman as that creepy bitch with the magical silver sperms flying around her. "She seems to have a heightened sixth sense! Let's go talk to her!"

"Didn't Koenma ever tell you not to talk to strangers?"

"Silly Kagura-chan!" Botan had some how managed to make a weird cat face and, to be perfectly honest, it scared the shit out of Kagura. "Kikyo-sama is a regular in Spiritworld! She's a veteran at this whole being dead thing!"

_Why am I not surprised?_

"I suppose going to see her couldn't hurt anything… I've been wondering how Kohaku is doing."

"That's the spirit!" Then Kagura noticed that the Grim Reaper was giggling like a little girl.

"What's so funny?"

"Sorry… there was no pun intended! I said 'spirit' and you are a spirit! Isn't that just the funniest thing?"

"…No."

Silence.

"I'll go down to see her, I guess," Kagura said, jumping off of her feather and willing her bodiless form to the ground. She really did not need the feather anymore, but old habits die hard.

And as though Kikyo could see her clear as day, the undead miko drew and aimed an arrow at her. "You are the incarnation of the half-demon Naraku."

"Heh," Kagura snicker tauntingly. "Lower your weapon, Miko. There's nothing the likes of you can do to me!"

A curious look on her face, Kikyo's eyes bore into Kagura before lowering her weapon. "I see someone has gotten to you before I could have. Tell me, Spirit, why have you come here? Do you wish to be cleansed of the sins in your life?"

"Hmph." Kagura could feel something of her old demon-self rising up. It had been a long time since she had jeered at an adversary. "And what makes you think I would come to you for that? I am the free wind itself now!"

"You're forgetting," said the cool, calm voice. "You're the one who approached me. You must have some business."

The wind was silent for a moment. "How's the stupid kid?"

"…Excuse me?"

"You know, Kohaku. How is he?" Kagura shifted off to the side a little and glared.

Kikyo's expression seemed to soften a little. Maybe this child of Naraku's had a soul after all. "He's okay, traumatized, but as okay as he can be given the circumstances. Why do you care?"

"I don't," she said as she faded her soul back into the form of a breezed that slapped the creepy bitch across her clay face. The breeze quickly changed into a large gale as Kagura's soul took off for the mountains.

"Awww!" Botan clapped excitedly. "She really does care about someone!" She paused for a minute of non-intellectual silence. "She's going to be so pissed when she finds out that boy would have lived anyway…"


End file.
